AU students joined thousands of people in a march down Pennsylvania Avenue from Freedom Plaza to the U.S. Capitol Monday, rallying at both ends of the march in support of legislation that would give the District of Columbia a voting member in the House of Representatives.
Different sources estimated the number of people who participated in the event to be between 3,500 and 5,000, making it the largest voting rights rally in decades, according to The Washington Post.
The event's 51 co-sponsoring organizations, which included DC Vote, People for the American Way and the D.C. government, decided to hold the rally on Monday because it was D.C. Emancipation Day, according to information on the event's Web site.
Emancipation Day is a District holiday that marks the date in 1862 when then-President Abraham Lincoln signed a law that freed the 3,100 slaves who lived in D.C. at the time, according to the D.C. government's Web site.
Josh Goodman, treasurer of the College Democrats and a junior in the School of International Service, helped organize a group of AU students to attend the rally but could not attend himself because of classes.
"I have an internship with [Mike Panetta], the shadow representative for the District of Columbia, and it was part of my job," he said. "But I really do believe in the cause of D.C. congressional representation. We're talking about 600,000 Americans who serve in the military, who pay their taxes, who live every day of their lives the way all of us do. But because of where they were born or where they choose to live, they're denied the most basic of our governmental structures."
Sharon Raya, a freshman in the School of Public Affairs who helped table and promote the event on campus for DC Vote, said the turnout for the rally was good given that Washington was experiencing rainy and cold weather conditions that day.
"The weather really didn't help all that much - it was cold, it was windy, it was raining," she said. "But the motivation and enthusiasm from the crowd was intense. When [D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, D] stood outside and asked, 'Do you feel the cold?' and, 'Do you feel the rain?,' everybody was screaming 'No!' It was really inspiring just to be there and feel that intensity."
Along with Fenty, former Mayor Anthony Williams, D, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., and members of the D.C. City Council also spoke at the event, according to the Post.
The current legislation that would give the District voting representation in Congress, which Norton and Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., co-sponsored, would permanently add two seats to the House. One seat would go to the Democratic-favored District, while the other would go to Republican-favored Utah, the state that came closest to qualifying for an additional representative in the 2000 census. House Democrats temporarily postponed a vote on the bill in late March after Republicans attempted to use it to weaken the District's gun restrictions, according to the Post.
Miriam Wood, a sophomore in SIS, said she was optimistic about the bill's chances of passing.
"I think the fact that we're fighting a war in Iraq based on democracy while D.C. voters continue to not have voting representation in Congress is making it a bigger issue," she said. "That fact is going to put more pressure on members of Congress to vote in favor of it. The House is also now controlled by the Democrats, so that also has a positive effect on the possibility of D.C. voting rights becoming a reality"
